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The season of giving hasn't ended: There are residents of the Albany Diocese in need of food assistance all year long.

The Evangelist followed the path of donated food from its source all the way to clients of CoNSERNS-U, one of the many Catholic resources across the Diocese for food aid. The Rensselaer County Catholic Charities program provides five days' worth of emergency food to more than 340 clients up to once a month.

Melissa Seney of Schodack is one of those people. She has been relying on the program's food pantry to supplement her cabinets since the mid-1990s, when she lost her long-term job and health problems put her on disability.

Through the cracks
"I make too much for food stamps, but not enough to make it through every month," Ms. Seney told The Evangelist. "I kind of fall through the cracks. I call it a gray area. There's a lot of people like me."

She's used multiple food pantries in the past, especially when her four children were young, but appreciates CoNSERNS-U's "client choice" model, which allows clients to pick items in different food categories.

"It's a fair system," she said. "I get to try things I normally wouldn't buy in the supermarket. It's like a shopping trip. You pick out what you need, and it's less wasteful than other pantries."

Ms. Seney knows that the availability of items depends on supplies at the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, the main supplier of CoNSERNS-U's food. The 32-year-old food bank serves about 320,000 people a year - a sharp increase of about 70,000 over four years ago - with 32 million pounds of food.

About 1,000 agencies are members of the Regional Food Bank from 23 counties around New York State. Food bank officials say that demand on local food pantries has doubled in the past decade.

Where donations start
The Regional Food Bank gets about 54 percent of its food from food industry donations - items that are safe, but can't be sold because of things like overproduction or damaged packaging - and the rest from co-op programs and the federal government, which buys food from farmers to keep them in business.

The food from farmers gets directed to the Feeding America network, of which the Regional Food Bank is one of 200 food bank members.

Food pantries like CoNSERNS-U pay nothing for the federal foods; they pay 16 cents per pound in handling fees for the company foods and wholesale prices for the co-op foods. The selections and quality tend to fluctuate, depending on which items are in surplus and how much money the government puts into the system.

"It's like a rollercoaster sometimes," said Mark Quandt, executive director of the Regional Food Bank. "Sometimes it's related to need, and sometimes you can't figure it out," since "the winds of Congress" are changeable.

More and more
The Regional Food Bank routinely adds to its list more agencies with growing needs. There is national pressure for programs to supply more produce and meat, too.

"You want to provide the best food you can: the more nutritious, the better," Mr. Quandt said. "We would not be here if it wasn't for financial donations."

CoNSERNS-U is one of about 52 member organizations of The Food Pantries for the Capital District, a network that acts as a middleman to deliver about 4,000 pounds of food bank items to the Rensselaer County location every week. About 17 percent of the pantry's supply comes from local churches and schools.

Like other member organizations, CoNSERNS-U must pay for the food it gets for clients. Its food bank orders are funded by a yearly state grant; in 2014, the grant amounted to $17,500. CoNSERNS-U also gets $1,200 a year from St. Michael the Archangel parish in Troy and donations from individuals and other community organizations.

Colleen Pidgeon, CoNSERNS-U's program coordinator, said the number of families looking for assistance from the program more than once a month has increased as federal food assistance has been cut, food prices have soared, residents have "timed out" on unemployment benefits and more people have been downsized or laid off from their jobs.

CoNSERNS-U clients
"Our numbers have been steadily increasing since 2008, and then they stabilized in 2013, and now they've seen a drastic increase again in 2014," Mrs. Pidgeon said. "The poor are much poorer now. [But] it's like the loaves and the fishes: When there's a greater need, it's provided for."

Mrs. Pidgeon was proud to transition the pantry to a client choice model when the recession hit in 2008.

"It's so hard for an individual to have to come to ask for help," she said; being able to select their own food "makes it a more pleasant experience and empowers them to be able to choose for themselves. We're really giving them dignity."

Ms. Seney uses the pantry once a month - she went twice one month when her identity was stolen last year - and says it's kept her from making tough choices.

"There's always unexpected stuff," she said. "If nothing happens and we don't have a hard winter, we're OK. If my propane needs to be filled, I need to choose between heating my place and food. There's a lot of people in a similar situation who would go without."[[In-content Ad]]

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